


feel the ground beneath my feet turn into the sky

by friendly_ficus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, also some murder ofscreen, and 'not-NOT' a forger jester, featuring Fine Inks And Paper Merchant Astrid, the amount of green cloaks in this fic: many, what’s the point of fic if not for ships like this, yussa is barely in this but he is a dragon. i consider that canon.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27340564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: When the last fires in the Candles go out, Astrid leaves Rexxentrum for good. She is, as always, looking for something more.(She finds it in some unexpected places.)
Relationships: Astrid/Jester Lavorre
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	feel the ground beneath my feet turn into the sky

**Author's Note:**

> and we are manifesting a good future for astrid in this fic

The Candles go up, well, like candles. It’s the end of a long summer of drought, which might be the story they tell. Or maybe the mages broke their oaths to the king at last, and it was some kind of divine retribution. Or maybe it was one of their own, old scars not quite aching, dropping a spark in Ikithon’s grove; some mixture of blackpowder and a sandy green glass and alchemical fire that feeds on magic and consumes like a starving thing.

Really, it could’ve been anything. 

The fires burn for days, glowing through the night, and Rexxentrum itself shudders and keens. Even the Academy burns, for all that they’re able to evacuate. She watches it from the window Trent worked his illusions through, a tapestry of smoke and the occasional flash of arcane light as something particularly magical catches fire.

That’s what’s keeping it in the Candles, Astrid knows, while they’ve been able to put it out in the rest of the city. There’s far too much fuel here.

Eodwulf comes to Astrid on the ninth day, feathers trailing in his shadow. His eyes are dark and grim, the symbol of his holy patron shining against his chest.

“Let me see him, Astrid.”

She waves a hand and they both recognize the  _ thunk  _ of Master Ikithon’s chambers unlocking.

Eodwulf leaves with a shroud.

(“Don’t worry,” Astrid had told him. “It’ll be contained soon, you know, and it can be Ludinus’ problem to explain. Where are our domestic protections, hm?”

It had made the old man laugh. Astrid had hated that laugh, but it had been a useful thing to do.

He’d gotten thirsty, after all, and she’d been there with the water.)

\---

Astrid meets an alchemist near the border.

She’s been traveling for a few weeks, the slow way. Most days her horse never breaks a sweat; the roads are in decent repair, and what foes find her are easily dealt with.

No one knows her. She cut her hair on the first day, left the strands in Eodwulf’s old room like a goodbye. Stupid, maybe, or sentimental—he was never one to care much about appearances beyond his own, he surely hasn’t started caring about hers now—and either way, it left an annoying mess to clean up. Maybe it was a little bit of a  _ fuck you, how could you leave me behind with him, how could you run away to your cathedral and your goddess and leave me in this tower to rot. _

Really, it could’ve been anything.

But no one knows Astrid without her hair and her robes and the various trappings of her old office, and she’s found she likes the anonymity.

Astrid meets an alchemist near the border, swearing at a ream of paper as he mixes various chemicals and paints them over the smooth, empty surface. Her fingers itch the way they always do, to take the paper and make it something new. And she  _ could  _ take it without much trouble. His back is to her, wild red hair falling all over the place as he works.

He looks up when she steps on a stick, violently green eyes glinting, and then she’s somehow swept up in his business. He’s having a very low-stakes problem—he’s an  _ artist,  _ he tells her, he didn’t get into this to be a  _ shopkeep _ and doesn’t want to be drawn into the current merchant troubles in Nicodranas—and Astrid is traveling, anyway. And no, Astrid has never seen Nicodranas. And yes, Astrid does seem very capable. And yes, Astrid does enjoy talking to people. And yes, it really isn’t  _ that  _ inconvenient for her to go the rest of the journey with him.

She’s fairly certain he thinks he’s manipulated her into the job, by the time they’re shaking hands. It’s a little adorable.

Three and a half weeks later, she’s busting up a scuffle in the Open Quay. It’s bad for business when there’re fights right outside the stationary shop—people just don’t get in the mood to write letters when they have to step over a groaning combatant.

And she realizes, elbowing her way into the mess, that the alchemist fucked off a week ago to go and find  _ inspiration  _ for new paper patterns, whatever that means. And she realizes, going through the documents left in the shop’s safe, that the rental agreement with one Yussa Errenis states that whoever is running the place is entirely autonomous, as long as they don’t try to sell the land. And she realizes that she likes the smell of paper, that it’s not so bad negotiating over pigments and ink, that dealing with people is fairly painless when you can throw them out with a flick of your hand and a misapplication of gravity.

Well, then. Well.

A gull cries. When the windows are cracked open a breeze blows through, and Astrid can hear the sea. 

It’s nice.

\---

She knows that she should be more horrified, at herself or at her circumstances. She devoted the entirety of her being to discovery, to service, and now she's turned her back on her country and doesn't do much in the way of discovering. She knows that she should miss it more.

But she wonders a little bit, what it would be like to be the kind of person whose hands shook when tipping poison into a pitcher of water. And the Astrid in Nicodranas would have shaky hands, even though the Astrid in Rexxentrum never did.

She’s not sure which Astrid it is that receives the invitation, a month into her custodianship of the shop.

It’s been a quiet day, the gulls squawking in the distance and one of the mismatched teacups found in the rooms above the shop pressed into service, a quick rune traced on the bottom of it to keep her tea hot. Astrid rises early, most days, less than an hour after dawn. She opens the shop early too, and closes whenever she’s had enough of it for the day. The rent is already paid through Winter’s Crest three years hence, and she does enough business to cover things like food without worrying about the rest of it.

She’s considering closing up when the bell above the door jangles, letting in an aging goblin in a smart vest. He looks around at the various boxes and shelves—and  _ those  _ had been the work of the first week, as the alchemist was apparently allergic to any kind of logical organization before he left—and she watches him for a few moments before speaking up..

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asks, and he doesn’t jump. 

“Would you be the proprietor, then?” He draws an envelope from an inside pocket of the vest, the edges of it sharp and crisp. Good quality paper, she knows, because that’s the kind of thing she’s started noticing these past few weeks. 

(The back of her mind is whispering that he seems unarmed, but you can never trust what someone  _ seems  _ to be, and is that sulfur under his nails? Is that a trace of magic in the air around him, a glint of enchantment on his spectacles? She catalogues those things unconsciously now, after so many years of practice.)

“Yes. Were you looking for a particular item, or just browsing? We’ve had an interesting shipment of Xhorhasian paper come in—they use a different width of laidlines there, it has potential implications for magical scripting that haven’t been widely explored yet.” He’s here to give her whatever’s in that envelope, they both know it, but that doesn’t mean she’s just going to drop the pleasantries. And there’s a spark of interest in his eyes when she mentions magic, though it’s not quite ravenous. 

“I’m here to convey my master’s regards,” he says, setting the envelope on the shop counter next to her steaming cup of tea. “I’m Wensforth, assistant to Yussa Errenis, Lord of the Tidepeak. He was interested to hear that you’d started keeping regular hours.”

“Oh, we’re under new management,” Astrid says with a smile, internally going over everything she knows about her landlord. He’s a mage of some renown, who taught Oremid Hass before he was anyone of note in the Assembly. If Wensforth is his assistant in the way Astrid was  _ Trent’s  _ assistant... 

But there’s nothing beyond a brisk sense of efficiency on his face as he waits for her to take up the envelope, which means he’s either good enough to fool her or isn’t trying to. 

“Give him mine in return, I suppose.” 

The envelope is cool and heavy in her hand, a rich cream color shot through with threads of gold. It’s entirely ostentatious—or it  _ would be,  _ were Master Errenis not the mage of great repute in this town, were he not the last holdout against the whole of the Clovis Concord. No, the envelope in her hands is a statement piece, an expression of wealth and power.

“And your name is?” Wensforth prompts, causing Astrid to stiffen. She hasn’t come up with a cover, you see, beyond shedding everything she is, beyond the amulet under her shirt, warm against her body.

_ Fuck it,  _ she decides, because it’s a common enough name. What are the chances he’s ever heard of her, anyway? Not all the way out here.

“Astrid,” she says, sliding a finger under one flap of the envelope, starting to pull at the seal. “No family name.”

The wax crumbles strangely when she reaches the edge of it, which is a shame. She’d planned to save the crest.

When she looks up she’s alone in the shop, an invitation to tea in her hands.

And it’s not like she can  _ decline. _

\---

Something that never came up while she planned her grand plan: what to wear after the world has ended.

If she were in Rexxentrum, if she were with the Assembly, it would be clear. A dark robe with whatever sort of detailing she chose, likely white or gold to show her association with Trent. Perhaps an insignia to show her seniority, perhaps not. Astrid isn’t sure there  _ is  _ an Assembly any longer, and she didn’t take any of her formalwear with her even if there is. (And she hates it, if there's anything left after the fire to hate.) 

The fashions in Nicodranas are far more varied; she could have anything, really, if she went on a stroll through the market. The choice was almost too much in her first days, when she didn’t so much as leave the shop. And then the alchemist had left and she’d had to get to know her neighbors, and her trade partners, and, well, it’s been a very busy month, and she hasn’t had the time to go looking for formal clothes.

Her hair is growing slowly, dark brown coming through more strongly than it has in years. She hasn’t had the time to dye it, either, and it’s at an awkward length that’s between short and shoulder-length, choppy in a way that shows that she took a knife to it a few months ago.

To put it simply, she’s ill-prepared for tea with a man who sends invitations in gilded envelopes.

To put it simply, she’s not sure that she cares.

Astrid...  _ likes  _ the clashing outfits she’s pieced together from her own wardrobe and the clothing abandoned in the rooms above the shop. She likes the shirts with the ridiculous puffed sleeves, the inexplicable variety of green cloaks. She likes the beaded brooches and lumpy scarves and oversized hats and mismatched socks.

She likes them because she can look in the mirror in the morning and barely recognize the person looking back. Trent Ikithon’s assistant wouldn’t be caught  _ dead  _ in clothes like these, not unless she was undercover somehow. It would insult the dignity of her station.

Astrid in Nicodranas, who drinks from a tea service that doesn’t have a single piece in common with itself, doesn’t think about the dignity of her station at all. She thinks about the price of fish at the market, about the cool breeze blowing over the water, about a cantrip for making letters weatherproof. And if she wants to wear a red hat with a wide brim that dangles with silver stars, paired with a cloak that’s pine green and a shirt that’s sky blue and pants that are patched at the knees and socks that are purple and orange respectively, well. She has no reason not to.

She tones it down a  _ little  _ for the tea, though, swaps the red hat for the warmth of the sun in her hair and goes out to buy a pair of matching socks. It’s... sedate isn’t the right word, for the browns and greens and blues of her clothes, but they’re not so flashy.

Master Yussa Errenis wears robes that shimmer like gold, of course, and by the time they’re sitting down to tea she’s pretty sure she could’ve gotten away with her hat.

“Lady Astrid,” he says, after they’ve both had a few sips, “I want to know what you plan to do in my city.”

Astrid looks up from her tea, the discomfort of being in this tower building up like static in her veins, and finds herself pinned in place by his gaze.  _ Dangerous,  _ she thinks, which is an obvious thing. But she can’t put it away, can’t drop it, can’t banish the taste of adrenaline from her mouth.  _ This man is dangerous. _

“I,” she pauses, swallows the first six lies that spring to mind. “I was thinking I’d live.”

There’s a moment where he doesn’t blink, just keeps staring at her with that sharp gaze, and something in Astrid is curling up small and cowering from it. She doesn’t move a muscle, for all that she’s smelling smoke, for all that her hands want to shake. And then there’s a moment where it breaks.

She’s so  _ angry,  _ entirely furious all at once. Furious at being in another mage’s tower, at another mage’s mercy. Furious at being afraid, at his ugly, ornate tea service, at the fact that she didn’t wear her hat. Furious that she’s here in a stuffy room when she could be opening the upstairs windows to let the afternoon breeze into her rooms, that she’s negotiating  _ something  _ when she could be testing the differences in reactivity in parchments from the Empire and Xhorhas, that she’s supposed to be  _ out,  _ it’s supposed to be  _ over,  _ and she’s still somehow at a table across from someone powerful who might wish her ill.

Astrid sets her teacup down without so much as a  _ clink  _ against the saucer. She has spent her whole life being furious—she can hardly let it rule her now. And, though her instincts are  _ screaming  _ at her to be small, to hide, she stands to walk out.

She pauses at the doorway, not looking back, and says, “Also, I thought I’d sell stationary. New inks from Feolinn are arriving next week, very limited supply, be sure to order them soon.”

“Are they anything noteworthy?” he asks, his voice rumbling in her ears.

“They put  _ wine  _ in them,” she replies. “It’s stupid. It works.”

And she walks out of the Tidepeak without a backward glance.

\---

Wensforth shows up the next day just as she’s opening the shop. He’s got a roll of parchment tucked under one arm and is clearly on the first of his own errands for the day.

Astrid, half-cape in emerald across her shoulders and hat firmly in place, raises an eyebrow.

“Good morning, Lady Astrid,” he says pointedly, and she echoes the greeting. So they  _ are  _ still doing pleasantries, then.

“I’m afraid I’m not free for tea anytime soon,” she says. “It’s very busy here, I’m sure you understand.”

Wensforth doesn’t even glance around the empty shop before nodding. “I’m here to add to that business, Lady Astrid,” he promises, unrolling the parchment across her counter. 

It’s covered in squares of color, arranged meticulously in the kind of system Astrid’s itching to decode. At least twenty types of ink, each labeled, along with a few smaller scraps of paper in various textures glued to it.

“Master Errenis often finds himself in need of paper and ink,” Wensforth says. “Those marked with stars are the ones he runs out of most often. He asked me to see if you could supply them.”

Astrid hates it a little, the feeling that she’s passed some sort of test. 

She accepts the business anyway.

\---

She’s trying on hats at the milliner’s when Jester Lavorre comes darting through the door.

It’s been a hell of a morning. Astrid rose earlier than usual, felt caught up in dreams that were a little too close to memories for the first hour, fighting shivers that tea hot enough to burn her mouth  _ and  _ the sweater that’s some kind of dizzying experiment with stripes couldn’t chase away. When she looked in the mirror she recognized the girl, somewhere behind her eyes, who smiled at her family on her last visit home.

And then two of the stars on her hat got caught in the collar of the sweater and promptly broke off and she had to search the floor for them for far longer than it should’ve taken, and she spilled black tea on the olive green cloak and had to figure out a place to spread it out to dry, and her supplier of Marquesian paper sent a message to say his shipment would be delayed for at least a week. 

All this to say, she’d given up on opening the shop and had instead headed deeper into the city, hunting for someone to reaffix the stars and reinforce the rest of them. It’s just chilly enough to warrant the cape she’d worn to tea with Master Errenis over her sweater—it doesn’t get half as cold here as it did in Rexxentrum, according to her neighbors, but there’s a measure of dampness in the autumn air—and she soon found herself trying on hats in various colors and styles in a warm shop, while the milliner looked over her masterpiece of red and silver in the back room.

She’s considering a purple beret when the bell above the door chimes and the door itself bangs into the wall. There’s a flash of blue skin and horns and hair that’s grown long, a moment where Lavorre’s eyes go wide, meeting her gaze in the mirror—

“Traveler, hide me,” the tiefling says to the air, a spell beginning to build in her hands. Astrid can hear the sound of guards’ boots coming through the open door.

She doesn’t think—Astrid’s hand snakes out to grip her shoulder and haul her the rest of the way into the shop. With a quick incantation, she turns the other woman invisible.

“Oh!” Lavorre yelps, and Astrid shuts the door of the millinery with a catrip, turns back to the mirror. 

They’re silent for one beat, then another; the door to the shop opens and one of the Zhelezo pokes his head in.

“You see a woman come this way, miss? Blue tiefling, around your height?”

There’s an inhale from behind Astrid, so close it nearly ruffles her hair, and she realizes just how little space there is in the front of the shop. It’s really only enough for two people who know each other well enough to wedge themselves between hatboxes and bolts of felt. If Astrid steps the wrong way—

She barely turns, feels her cheek brush against the curve of an invisible horn. She lets her face go soft and worried, eyes a little wide and chin tilting up. “I can’t say I have; should I be concerned? Is there some danger?”

“Uh, nothing to worry about. If you do see her—”

“I’ll head to the nearest of your fellows at once,” Astrid lies, as she feels Lavorre’s relieved exhale.

The Zhelezo leaves with a nod, well-satisfied with the show of faith in the guard. Astrid hears one soft footfall, then another, as Lavorre withdraws into the doorway.

“Astrid?” she asks, soft with something like shock, and Astrid feels her shoulders getting tight.

“I live here,” she bites out, angrier than she means to. “I mean—”

There’s a rustling of curtains as the milliner comes back to the front of the shop, Astrid’s hat in her hands. The stars, each newly secured with a stronger loop of wire, shine in the light. Astrid pays for it and adds on the beret, walks out into the damp without paying much mind to the way the door took an extra beat to close behind her.

An arm slips into hers, links elbows. 

Astrid walks with an invisible companion through the fog, all the way back home.

\---

And then she’s locking the door and making sure the sign is in the window that asks people to come again another day, and she’s drawing the curtains, and she’s turning to face Bre— _ Caleb’s...  _ friend? Family? Boon companion?

“I heard you died,” says Jester Lavorre, a little bit of confusion in her voice. “Eodwulf sent a message to Caleb about the fire and everything.”

“He’s well?” Her voice comes out a little hoarse. She’s not really sure what to say, what other questions to ask:  _ Why didn’t he ever come back?  _ is tempting, but. She’s not sure she wants to know.

“He is. He’s a sailor, now.” Lavorre’s eyes are sharp and Astrid knows they’re both remembering Trent and Caleb at the dinner table, the old man saying  _ you won’t.  _ Caleb agreeing with him.

Well, Astrid is evidence enough that things can change, she supposes.

“Do you want some tea?” Astrid offers, and she isn’t surprised when Lavorre shakes her head.

“Maybe another time,” she says, a little bit of a smile around her mouth. There’s the shiver of a spell settling over them both and Astrid holds a lightning bolt behind her teeth. “Do you want me to send him a message?”

“What? No, not either of them. I’m... Lavorre,” she sighs, “I really do just live here.”

“Oh, I believe you,” the tiefling says brightly. “I only have one question!”

“What?”

“Why did you set the fire, in Rexxentrum?”

Astrid freezes. She’s, she’s never spoken of it, not since that moment at the old man’s bedside. She opens her mouth to say something about necessity, something about the greater good, but the lie won’t make it past her lips, past the lightning in her throat.

“I hated it,” she says instead, “it was... sickness and rot, all the way through. It was time for it to burn.” 

Her scars itch, the smell of smoke fills her nose. Astrid has twenty years of terrible actions she could cite, more awful things she’s done than bear repeating, even more that she only ever heard of. But this is as much of the truth as she will give Lavorre—it was broken, it was never going to change. It was time for it to burn. At some point over the final few months, when she was testing formulae and gathering reagents, when ‘Wulf had gone to live at the temple full-time and it was just her and the old man in the tower, when she figured out no one was coming back to do anything, Astrid stopped believing in her own hard choices. Whatever justifications had served for twenty years failed, premise by premise, in a slow kind of destruction.

The Astrid in Rexxentrum, the Astrid who set the fire, the Astrid who cut her hair—she didn’t believe in anything at all. Maybe that was reason enough.

“How did you know?” she asks Lavorre’s unwavering smile.

“A friend told me,” she says. “He knows all sorts of things.”

Astrid’s cape is very warm around her shoulders, as she unlocks the door for the other woman to leave.

Lavorre pauses at the door. “I wish you’d call me Jester,” she says, looking back to catch Astrid’s gaze.

Astrid blinks. “Alright.”

\---

She goes back to her routine. What else is there to do?

She could run, could take ship or go overland, take the money from Master Errenis’ latest commission and disappear. But she likes watching the sun set over the water, the way it turns the sky orange and gold. And she likes her mismatched dishes and her clothes and the smell of the paper, and she’s close to figuring out an enchantment for a quill to draw borders on some of the stationary, and she’s tired. She’s tired, and if Jester wants to call her friends together and kill her, well, she’s welcome to try.

Jester doesn’t call her friends together to kill Astrid. She doesn’t do anything at all, really, aside from coming by to buy a box of stationary every few weeks. It seems surreal, that she’s become one of Astrid’s regular customers, but she apparently has a lot of letters to write.

And she brings pastries, sometimes, and Astrid will close the shop and make tea.

It’s not that she doesn’t  _ know  _ she’s being brought around, that Jester’s approaching her like a stray kitten, that she’s likely an object of suspicion or pity to the other woman. She’s aware it’s a strategy, but she likes the consideration anyway—the way Jester comes by the shop, instead of catching her while she’s out at the market; the way she’s kind in everything she does. 

She’s aware it’s a strategy, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t working.

She finds herself looking up and smiling, the next time Jester comes in for new colors of ink.

(And then she has a dream about the both of them in the hat shop, pressed close enough to feel each other breathe, and wakes swearing.)

\---

“Do you know what kind of paper the Zhelezo use for their missives?” Jester asks, three months into their acquaintance. 

Astrid nods, fetches her a box of the middle-grade cotton paper she isn’t  _ technically  _ meant to have. It’s only slightly illegal, and it came along with a shipment a few weeks back—what was she going to do,  _ burn  _ it?

“Is this the other shoe dropping, then?” she can’t help but ask, as Jester pays. 

The tiefling blinks, honest shock on her face for a moment. Then, to Astrid’s horror, her expression crumples.

“Oh,  _ Astrid,”  _ Jester cries, dropping the box on the counter and taking Astrid’s hands. “We’re  _ friends,  _ you know?”

Astrid hasn’t had a friend in, in a very long time. She raises an eyebrow, knows her face well enough to keep it schooled.

Jester’s face falls into a determined expression. “I’ll prove it to you, I promise!”

Her hands are cool, gripping Astrid’s. A breeze blows through the shop, sends the top sheets of a few stacks fluttering to the floor.

“You really don’t have to do that,” she tries, but the words are already too late.

The sunset paints the sky outside orange and gold. Jester Lavorre has decided that they’re friends. The moment stretches.

“I’m closing the shop soon,” Astrid says. “Do you want me to—you’ve grown your hair out. Do you want me to teach you some styles?”

And Jester smiles, and nods.

**Author's Note:**

> title for this fic is a pull from the song "Darling Divine," by Wild Child  
> yes jester needs paper and ink Of Course It Is Not For Forgery :3 Why Would You Ask That.  
> not a redemption arc so much as a retirement—”does astrid need a redemption arc” is a more complicated question than i really wanted to get into in this story—but i... love astrid... and jester/astrid was such a fun idea... that’s all i have to say about that.  
> astrid five minutes into living in nicodranas: oh i am about to go full Wizard Fashion  
> i hope this was a fun fic to read; this pairing is very much me at my most ‘hm, wouldn’t that be cool?’ and it was a lot of fun to write it! possibly more of this au in the future, not sure yet.  
> leave a comment and let me know what you think!! i really love them! :)


End file.
